"You come home this minute. Do you hear?"
The other boys seemed to think this visitation upon one of their
number required them to preserve for a time the hang-dog air of a
collection of culprits, and they remained in guilty silence until the
little Hannigan, wrathfully protesting, was pushed through the door of
his home. Mrs. Hannigan cast a piercing glance over the group, stared
with a bitter face at the Trescott house, as if this new and handsome
edifice was insulting her, and then followed her son.
There was wavering in the party. An inroad by one mother always caused
them to carefully sweep the horizon to see if there were more coming.
"This is my yard," said Jimmie, proudly. "We don't have to go home."
The monster on the box had turned its black crepe countenance towards
the sky, and was waving its arms in time to a religious chant. "Look
at him now," cried a little boy. They turned, and were transfixed by
the solemnity and mystery of the indefinable gestures. The wail of the
melody was mournful and slow. They drew back. It seemed to spellbind
them with the power of a funeral. They were so absorbed that they did
not hear the doctor's buggy drive up to the stable. Trescott got out,
tied his horse, and approached the group. Jimmie saw him first, and at
his look of dismay the others wheeled.
"What's all this, Jimmie?" asked Trescott, in surprise.
The lad advanced to the front of his companions, halted, and said
nothing. Trescott's face gloomed slightly as he scanned the scene.
"What were you doing, Jimmie?"
"We was playin'," answered Jimmie, huskily.
"Playing at what?"
"Just playin'."
Trescott looked gravely at the other boys, and asked them to please go
home. They proceeded to the street much in the manner of frustrated
and revealed assassins. The crime of trespass on another boy's place
was still a crime when they had only accepted the other boy's cordial
invitation, and they were used to being sent out of all manner of
gardens upon the sudden appearance of a father or a mother. Jimmie had
wretchedly watched the departure of his companions. It involved the
loss of his position as a lad who controlled the privileges of his
father's grounds, but then he knew that in the beginning he had no
right to ask so many boys to be his guests.
Once on the sidewalk, however, they speedily forgot their shame as
trespassers, and the large boy launched forth in a description of his
success in the late trial of courage. As they went rapidly up the
street, the little boy who had made the furtive expedition cried out
confidently from the rear, "Yes, and I went almost up to him, didn't
I, Willie?"
The large boy crushed him in a few words. "Huh!" he scoffed. "You only
went a little way. I went clear up to him."
The pace of the other boys was so manly that the tiny thing had to
trot, and he remained at the rear, getting entangled in their legs in
his attempts to reach the front rank and become of some importance,
dodging this way and that way, and always piping out his little claim
to glory.